


going to scarif

by thekatriarch



Series: jyn & cassian have a conversation [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekatriarch/pseuds/thekatriarch
Summary: There was something about him that got under her skin. What was it? She wondered how much longer she had to figure it out, or if it even mattered. A couple of hours, at the most.Don’t be so pessimistic, she thought. We might get out of this alive. It’s a good plan. And they don’t know we’re coming.* * * * *Cassian and Jyn have a conversation on the way to Scarif
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: jyn & cassian have a conversation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113449
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	going to scarif

They’d worked out the basic shape of their plan, and now there was nothing else to do but wait until they got there. Wait and hope. Jyn had been talking with Bodhi, but Bodhi kept wanting to talk about her father, and that was too raw and painful. If she thought too much about him, she would never make it through the rest of the day. She needed to keep her head straight. She had a job to do.

The shuttle wasn’t built to carry this many people, so most of them were sitting around on the floor in the main cargo hold. Jyn felt restless and kept finding herself wandering from the hold to the cabin and back again. Cassian had disappeared after they’d gotten the plan together, back up that same ladder he had climbed after their fight when they left Eadu. What was he doing up there? When she thought about him, that restless feeling got stronger. Probably best not to investigate why.

Lieutenant Selfa had told Jyn that Cassian usually did this if he was going into a combat zone: find some quiet corner, as far from everyone else as possible, and sit by himself, not talking to anyone. “He’s not very friendly,” said Selfa, “but he’s a hell of a good man in a fight.”

He’s not very friendly, she thought. That was true. She had disliked him right away. But she wasn’t very friendly either, and she disliked most people. Cassian had grown on her. He _was_ good in a fight: levelheaded and laser-focused. When things had first gone off the rails in Jedha City, it didn’t take long at all for her to trust that he had her back. And he’d dragged her out of there when she was too shattered to think about anything, had saved her life, when he really didn’t need to. He’d already talked to Bodhi by then; he knew where her father was, which was supposed to be the whole point of going to Jedha. He could have left her behind. He could have. No one would have blamed him if he had saved himself and left her to die. But he’d gotten her out of there. She had thought, maybe, that she’d grown on him, too. That he liked her, just a little.

That’s why she’d been so angry at him about Eadu. She’d thought she could trust him, and she’d been furious; not just at him, but at herself, for falling for the lie.

He’d done the right thing, in the end, though, hadn’t he? And why save her? Why would he do that, when he didn’t have to, if everything was just an elaborate lie?

She caught herself biting her nails. That wasn’t a good sign. She wondered what Cassian was doing up in that hold. Sitting by himself in silence? Maybe he was praying. He didn’t seem like the type, but you never know. Jyn probably didn’t seem like the type, either, and she prayed sometimes. Not often. Maybe she should pray now. She fished her necklace out from underneath her clothes, ran her fingers along the engraving in the crystal face. Trust the Force, it said. Those were the last words her mother said to her, when she put the necklace around Jyn’s neck.

What does that mean, she wondered, not for the first time. Trust the Force? Trust it to do _what?_ To protect me? It didn’t protect you.

Maybe Chirrut could answer that question. Maybe she’d ask him. Later. Right now she was staring at that ladder that Cassian had climbed up, still feeling restless, unable to get her mind off of him. What was it about him that bothered her so much? 

Don’t bother him, she thought. If he wanted to see you, he wouldn’t have gone up there in the first place. He wants to be alone.

But she couldn’t stop herself, and she climbed up the ladder. If he told her to go away, she would, she told herself. It was a small secondary cargo hold, and Cassian was seated on the floor, leaning against the wall, knees bent, arms resting on his legs, head back, eyes closed. Maybe he _was_ praying. Or sleeping. He opened his eyes and looked at her, a question on his face.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Please.” He gestured, an invitation to sit. She climbed the rest of the way in, sat next to him. It was a little tight, but it wasn’t too bad.

They sat in silence for a moment, and she tried to figure out what she’d come up here to say, but nothing came to mind.

“It’s a good plan,” she said.

Cassian nodded.

“I think it’ll work,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’ll work.”

“Are you all right?” she asked. He seemed different, in some way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Edgier, more tense. Not that she’d ever seen him relaxed. She wondered if he ever _did_ relax. What was he like, when he wasn’t like this?

Why did she care? _Did_ she care?

“Fine,” he said. “Just thinking about… I was raised by anarchists. Then I got here. It’s a real army. You have to do what they tell you to do, or you get people killed. There’s a reason for it, you know? It’s not just following orders just to follow them. And then sometimes you find yourself…” he trailed off. “But they hammer that into you. You have to follow orders or everything just collapses and people get killed.”

“People get killed when you do, too,” she said. Was he apologizing? Asking for forgiveness? If he did ask, would she give it to him?

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a war. People die. And the rest of us get… it ruins people.”

“Ruins people?” she echoed. “Do you think you’re ruined?”

He didn’t answer at first, staring at the floor between his knees. “The first time I killed someone,” he said, “I was nine years old. I’ve killed a lot of people since then. You tell me, Jyn. Am I ruined?”

She studied his face for a moment. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think you are.”

He looked down at the floor. “I wish I thought you were right,” he said.

“I was never very good at doing what I’m told,” said Jyn.

“No,” said Cassian. “You still aren’t. I wasn’t either, at first. But I learned. I had to learn.”

“To be a good soldier,” she said.

“I guess that’s one word for it,” he said, and she could hear her own words from earlier echoing around in her mind and knew it was what he was thinking of, too. _Might as well be a stormtrooper._ It had been a cruel thing to say, and that’s why she had said it. She had hated him so much right then, so she said the cruelest thing she could think of, and he hadn’t deserved it. A stormtrooper would have gone through with it. Cassian hadn’t. And then he’d saved her again, put himself in more danger to get her and bring her back, just like he had on Jedha. He didn’t have to do that. She’d served her purpose. They’d killed her father, like they wanted, and they didn’t need her anymore. He could have left her behind, and he didn’t. Twice.

And now he was disobeying orders again.

"I shouldn't have said that," she said.

He looked at her. "You weren't wrong.”

"Yes I was. You didn't do it."

"No," he said, after a moment. "I didn't. But I’ve done worse things."

“So have I. Can I ask you something?” He nodded. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why disobey the order? Why didn’t you kill him?”

He looked down at his hands, brow furrowed, like he wasn’t sure how to answer. “It was a stupid idea,” he said, eventually. “Killing him. It wouldn’t have done us any good; the weapon’s finished. And we had good reason to think he was trying to help us. Especially after I saw them kill all those people on the platform. They did that to punish him. For sending the message. So the message has to be true. The Empire’s not subtle enough to set up a whole fake operation like this.” This sounded a little rehearsed, and she wondered if he’d been preparing to have to defend himself to his boss.

“Anyway,” said Cassian. “If I had shot him, they would have known we were there. We never would have gotten away and then we’d all be dead, or worse.”

It all made perfect sense, but Jyn felt something that was a little like disappointment. What had she expected him to say? That he had done it for her? Of course he’d been thinking strategically. He wasn’t a sentimental person. She wondered if he’d ever cared about a person, or if it was only the cause that mattered to him.

She wondered why that mattered to her.

“I wish you’d come said all of that at the council meeting,” she said. “Maybe they would have listened to you.”

“They wouldn’t have,” he said. “The council is a joke. Half of them don’t take this seriously. It doesn’t mean anything to them, you know? It’s hypothetical. They haven’t _lost_ anything. Not yet.”

She remembered what he’d said to her when they’d been fighting, after Eadu. _You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it._ And she thought about the panicked council members saying they should just disband the Alliance and give up, run away. Let them win.

“What did you lose?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I never had anything to lose. Or I lost it so long ago I don’t remember what it was.”

It was probably the same things she’d lost. A childhood. A family. The ability to ever feel safe. She felt some emotion unfurl in her chest. Six years old, he’d said. That was even younger than she’d been, and she’d been far too young to do the things she’d done. It had destroyed her. How had he kept going?

He was looking at her, that unreadable scowl softened ever so slightly. “What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. She didn’t know how to answer. “Can I ask you another question?” she said. “Why come back for me? You didn’t need me anymore. You could have left me behind. You probably should have left me behind. I wouldn’t have tried to save you.”

He didn’t answer at first, but he looked thoughtful, like he was considering his answer. “I didn’t really think about it,” he said at last. “We’re in this together. I don’t leave people behind unless I have to.”

“You could have died on that platform,” she said.

He shrugged. “I could have died a lot of times. You have to be able to draw a line somewhere, or you just… Anyway, we did need you. You’re the messenger. If anyone was going to be able to convince the council, it was going to be you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” he replied, and he didn’t elaborate.

It was quiet for a little while. What was it that she wanted to say to him? It felt important that she tell him something, but she couldn’t imagine what it was.

“So if we pull this off,” said Cassian, “what are you going to do then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Assuming we’re still alive, when this is over,” he said. “What are you going to do? They promised you a new identity. Mothma keeps her promises.”

“Does she? Because she said she wanted to get my father out of there, not—”

“That wasn’t her,” said Cassian. “She would never sign off on an assassination.That was my general. He was on his own. If I’d done it he probably would have denied he ever told me to.” He drummed his fingers on his knees like he was nervous or agitated. “So?”

“So what?”

“What are you going to do? If you’re still alive tomorrow?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” she said. She wondered why he cared. If he cared. He wasn’t one for idle conversation, so why would he ask, unless the answer mattered to him? “I don’t really want to go back to… what I was doing.” 

“You mean prison?” he said, and she looked up at him, and the corner of his mouth was turned up, just a little. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen him smile before. It wasn’t much of a smile; more the suggestion of one, but it made something inside her flip over. She’d like to see him smile for real, she thought. She wondered if he ever did. She wondered if he ever laughed, if he ever had fun. What was he like, when he wasn’t like this?

“Did you just make a _joke?”_ she asked. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

“Well,” said Cassian, “we don’t know each other very well, do we?”

“No,” she said, “I guess we don’t.” And the thought made her feel a little sad. She wanted to get to know him, and she wanted to see him laugh, and she wanted something else that she was a little afraid to think about or name, because she wasn’t going to get the chance for any of that, because they were probably going to die on Scarif in a little while.

“So then tell me something,” she said. 

He raised his eyebrows, just a little, and said nothing. He was waiting for her to ask a question. She felt foolish. What was she doing? There was something about him that got under her skin. What was it? She wondered how much longer she had to figure it out, or if it even mattered. A couple of hours, at the most.

Don’t be so pessimistic, she thought. We might get out of this alive. It’s a good plan. And they don’t know we’re coming.

“What about you?” she said after a while. “What are you going to do, if you’re still alive when this is over?”

He shrugged. “Get demoted, probably.” Another joke. She laughed, and he dropped his head and smiled at her sidelong, a real smile that reached his eyes and made him look — it hit her like a punch in the gut — _beautiful._ She hadn’t really noticed how attractive he was, at least not consciously. She’d had too many other things on her mind. And now it was hard to notice anything else. The hold suddenly felt smaller than it had a moment earlier. She looked away, feeling even more foolish than before. Is this really a good time to start thinking about how pretty he is? she asked herself. Maybe it was; one or both of them would probably be dead pretty soon.

It was quiet again for a moment, and she was looking at her hands because she was afraid of what she’d feel if she looked at his face right now, and then, very slowly, Cassian said, “would you consider sticking around?”

She almost thought she’d heard him wrong, because she was so absorbed in trying not to think about what it would feel like to touch his face; whether that two days’ beard growth would feel rough or soft or somewhere in between. “You mean join the rebellion?” she asked, surprised. She hadn’t considered it. The idea hadn’t even crossed her mind.

He shrugged, and she wondered if he was specifically avoiding looking at her or if he was just looking elsewhere. “Better than prison, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “Like I said, I’m not good at doing what I’m told.”

Did he look a little disappointed or was that her imagination? Did she want him to be disappointed? What was she _doing?_

“Well,” she said, “maybe I will. I don’t know yet. It probably doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “There’s no point in giving up before we’ve even started.”

“Rebellions are built on hope,” she said, and he didn’t quite smile, but the corners of his eyes went crinkly in a way she really liked. It made him look different, younger. What was he like, when he wasn’t like this? Wouldn’t it be nice to get to find out?

This was starting to get into dangerous territory. The safest thing to do would be to climb back down into the cabin, go to the main cargo hold where everyone else was, but she just stayed where she was. Why not? What, really, did she have to lose?

He was getting a little jittery, drumming his fingers on his knees. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked.

“What? No. No, you can stay.” He said it quickly, stumbling a little over the words. “I just get impatient, you know? If I have too much time to think, I start second-guessing myself. Thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Everything that we didn’t think of. That kind of thing. So it’s good that you’re here. It’s distracting.” He gave her a tight, worried little smile, and, impulsively, she reached over and took his hand. 

Maybe that was it. It wasn’t something she wanted to _say_ to him. It was something she wanted to _do._

He looked at their hands and then looked at her face. “Why are you doing that?” he asked, in a very quiet voice.

“To distract you,” she said. “Should I not?” She started to pull her hand away, but his fingers closed around hers and held her fast.

She felt relieved to have finally figured it out. Why she’d come up here. Why she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. What she wanted from him. Was it a good idea? Probably not. But if she only had a few hours to live, she could think of worse ways to spend one of them.

“Jyn,” he said, and his voice was low and rough, uncertain, and it sent a little shiver up her spine. She looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“Distracting you,” she said again, and with the hand he wasn’t holding, she touched his face, let her thumb run along his cheekbone. He closed his eyes, and his lips parted just a little and she looked at them and felt a little gnawing hunger in her belly. “Is it working?”

“Yeah,” he said in that low, rough voice. “It is.” He opened his eyes again, looking at her with an expression that was unlike any expression she’d seen on his face before; it was softer, and there was a little bit of a question in it, and a little bit of something hopeful, and just the tiniest hint of a smile playing on his lips, which she couldn’t seem to look away from.

So she kissed him, because why not? What else were they going to do while they waited? She could sit here and pretend she didn’t want to, or she could just do it.

His hands found the sides of her face and she let herself lean into him, lean into the kiss. They broke apart for a moment and his eyes found hers. “Jyn,” he said, “are you sure this is a good—”

“Shut up, Cassian,” she said, and pulled him down to kiss her again.

His arms went tight around her waist and he lifted her up, just a little, just enough that she could get into his lap, one knee on each side of his hips, holding his face in her hands and bending down to kiss him.

This was objectively bizarre; twelve hours ago they’d been screaming at each other; twelve hours ago she’d hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone. Now… Well, they were on their way to die, probably, and he was gorgeous, and he smelled so good, and he was kissing her with such _hunger,_ like he’d been thinking about this, like he’d been wanting to kiss her for a while.

She ran her fingers through his hair, pulled his head back a little so she could kiss along his neck, adding a little bite just to see how he’d react to it. His hands went up inside her clothes and she could feel his rough hands on her skin, on her back. She shrugged out of her jacket and then tried to push his down off of his shoulders. He leaned forward into her, wiggled out of the jacket, pulled her closer, kissing her neck. 

They were short on time, and short on space, and there was a ship full of other people who might come up through the hatch at any moment, and they could hardly command a mission if they got caught like this, but she didn’t want to worry about any of that right now. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and if she didn’t do this now she was probably never going to have another chance.

“Jyn,” he breathed, and it made her hungry, the way her name sounded on his lips made something uncurl deep in her belly. She made a little sound, kissed him again, found the hem of her shirt and lifted it up and off, then reached for his. His back was against the wall so he had to lean in to her for her to get the shirt off, and then they were pressed together, bare skin against bare skin, his arms around her waist, hers around his neck.

She whispered his name into his ear and his hands on her hips pulled her down against him. Fuck it, she thought, let’s just go for it, and she started working on his belt.

Then, from the hatch: “Cassian. I’m very bored and no one is paying attention to me — oh, is this a _joke?_ Because I don’t think it’s very funny at all.”

“Hi, K,” said Cassian. Jyn turned her head and saw K2SO looking at them suspiciously from the hatch in the floor. She put her hand over her mouth, trying to contain her laughter.

“What’s so funny?” asked the droid. “What’s going on up here?”

Now Cassian was laughing a little, too, those little crinkles at the corners of his eyes back again. “Nothing,” said Cassian.

“It doesn’t look like nothing to me,” sniffed K2. 

“Nothing you need to worry about, then,” said Cassian. Jyn had to put her face into his shoulder to try to stifle the hysterical laughter building inside her, and she could feel him starting to shake with suppressed laughter, too, which only made it harder.

She sat up straight. “How much longer until we get where we’re going, K2?” she asked, still struggling to keep a straight face, glad they hadn’t managed to get her out of her bra yet, because she would never have been able to hold it together.

“We will exit hyperspace in between thirty-five and forty-two minutes,” said K2. “And then we’re all going to die. I wish you hadn’t made me come, Cassian. It’s one thing if you want to get yourself killed. I don’t think you should be allowed to kill me, too.”

“Well, we need your help,” said Cassian. “And you’d have gotten bored back on Yavin, wouldn’t you?” He looked at Jyn apologetically, shaking his head.

“I’m bored now. I’m always bored. You never let me do anything fun or interesting, and now you’re hiding up here with her. You’re not really planning to have sex _now?_ I think that’s in very poor taste.”

“Okay, thank you. Thank you, K. Objection noted.” She would not have guessed that it was possible for Cassian to look mortified, but she was learning a lot of new things about Cassian on this trip.

The droid sighed. “Well, I know you won’t listen to _me;_ you never listen to _me,_ do you? I don’t know why you bother dragging me around with you when you never pay any attention to me. I’m only trying to _help._ I guess I’ll just _leave_ then, but if anyone tries to come up here, I’m _not_ going to stop them.” The droid disappeared again.

They looked at each other, and then they both started laughing, and she liked the way laughter looked on his face. He didn’t seem like someone who laughed very often. But maybe he did, when he wasn’t walking around warzones and planning to assassinate people. What was he like, when he wasn’t like this? She kissed him again, stroking his face, and his arms went back around her waist.

He made a soft little sound, and then gently pulled away. “Jyn,” he said, reluctantly. “I think we’d better not. I don’t think thirty-five to forty-two minutes is enough time.”

“I work pretty fast,” she said, kissing along his neck again. 

He gave a little tiny shake of the head. “I don’t.” There was something a little bit playful on his face. 

“No?”

“No,” he said. “If I’m going to do something, I want to do it right.”

“I bet you do,” she said, with a little shiver. “I guess we’ll just have to wait, then.”

“Something to look forward to,” he agreed, and he leaned in and kissed her, soft and slow. He was so gentle; not at all what she’d expected. Not that she’d spent a lot of time forming expectations; she hadn’t actually known she wanted to do this until she was doing it, but if she _had_ thought about it in advance, this isn’t how she would have imagined it.

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” he said, when he broke away.

“About what?” she asked.

“About Eadu. I didn’t tell you the whole truth. It _was_ a stupid idea, and it _would_ have gotten us killed, but that wasn’t why. It was you. I kept thinking about you, and I couldn’t do it. And if we’re going to die today I wanted you to know that.” 

She took his face in her hands and kissed him again. “Thank you,” she said.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t enough,” he said. “I really am.”

She ran her hands through his hair again. “Me too,” she said. “You’re sure you don’t want to—”

“It’s not about what I _want,”_ he said, smiling a little and leaning in to kiss her again. 

“Nothing ever is, is it?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, and he ran his fingers along her face. “Nothing ever is.”

She kissed him one last time and then climbed off his lap and put her shirt back on. “If we’re still alive tomorrow,” she said, “and you still want me to stick around, I think I will.”

“Good,” said Cassian, with a little hint of a smile, pulling his own shirt back over his head. “I hope we are. Still alive.”

“We might be,” said Jyn. “It’s a good plan.”

“It’s a good plan,” he agreed. He took her hand in his. “I think we’ll be all right.”

“We will,” she agreed. “I think so, too.”


End file.
